Description/Overview: Nursing Honors Programs (NHPs) have recently begun to grow substantially. These are specialized tracks of honors courses, often including a thesis, leading to graduation “with honors in nursing.” Honors education is expanding globally and nursing education has responded to the call to nurture its novice or newest scholars, even in light of the heavy demands of professional nursing curricula. This symposium begins a dialog on the curriculum, processes, and outcomes of NHPs. Programs may originate at the freshman or departmental level of the major. The significance of faculty mentoring will be discussed. A panel of former honors students, now nurse educators and researchers, will identify how honors education influenced their career trajectories. NHPs have been developed on different curricular models and with different educational goals. Additionally, calls for transformation of the profession have highlighted the need for faculty development in nurturing excellence in high achieving nursing students (Benner, Sutphen, Leonard, & Day, 2009). This presentation provides educational and practical descriptions for building NHPs. It discusses the opportunities and challenges of creating a program for excellence at the point of foundational education of professional nurses. Designed for highly committed students, honors programs capture the intensity of their investment and direct it toward excellence of the profession. Their experiences are designed to build competence in research and evidence-based practice. Through collaboration in clinical and academic settings, they can bring the power of scholarship to practice in new ways. Their experience in scholarship as an undergraduate can open the door to a lifetime of growth as professional nurse scholars. Students’ achievements fuel passion for graduate school and engage them to active participation in leadership roles. Through experiences in research and scholarly processes, the student views the culture of nursing as facilitative and the role of the nurse as creative and effective.

Learner Objective #1: Discuss opportunities for development of emerging nurse scholars through nursing honors programs at the undergraduate level.

Learner Objective #2: Identify strategies for honors program development including recruitment, curriculum, faculty mentoring, and student outcomes.